Hello!
Lately many of my author friends have found their books on some free torrent site under someone else’s user name. Today I found I “won the lottery”. In other words, my alter ego was pirated.
Some people say, “What’s the big deal? I’m just sharing,” or “Your book is only .99.” Okay, would you like it if I took something you worked hard on, were proud of, and put it out there for FREE? You get NOTHING for it but I get to make a few pennies on YOUR HARD WORK. Somehow, when the tables are turned, it’s not such a wonderful thing.
I don’t use pirate sites. I don’t endorse them. I wish they ALL would be taken down.
There is nothing wrong with someone putting their stuff out there. If they want to do it for free, fine. But don’t take someone else’s hard work and cheat them out of it by putting it out there for free. Okay, so one of my ebooks is only .99. Would you want to give .99 to 786 people? That’s a lot of money! Well, one pirate site reported 786 downloads of my novella for FREE.
I spent most of my morning, instead of writing and editing, running down these torrent and free ebook sites. I had to write a cease and desist, take my stuff down NOW letter for EACH site. Hunting down the source of these shared files, notifying the host servers, and proving I am the real owner of the work is- well, it’s WORK. I’m playing whack-a-pirate instead of working on my next book. Hours wasted that I could have been WRITING.
“Free ebook downloads” are NOT free! They cost the authors in time and lost revenue. If caught, it can cost the pirates money and their site. Unfortunately, the pirates don’t seem to care. The only thing we can do is look out for each other. If you see an author’s stuff on a free site, NOTIFY THE AUTHOR! If it is on somewhere like Amazon.com and you KNOW the work is pirated, NOTIFY THE COMPANY! One evening I noticed a copy of “City of Bones” under the WRONG NAME along with four more pages of popular titles with the wrong artwork and wrong names. I notified the authors I could, messaged customer service, and stayed online with them until it was clear the user was a pirate of ebooks. A few hours later, the user and pirated works were GONE.
PLEASE! PLEASE! Don’t use pirate sites. Some of the unscrupulous characters actually put malware into the PDFs and if you use their site, you might get a nasty virus or Trojan horse or worse.
I can’t say enough how much I appreciate each of my fans! Without you, I wouldn’t be here! Thank you for your support! So please, if you see a pirated book, let the author know. Our first line of defense is our fans! YOU hold the power to keep our stuff out of the wrong hands by NOT uploading to pirate/free share sites and by calling out all the sites! I know it is a lot to ask, but it will keep me and other authors (not just the Indies) writing for a long time to come.
again. THANK YOU TO MY FANS!
until later, when my temper cools,
angel